Kim Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain

This prediction was easy to believe, given the roaring brown water bordering most of the zoo, and almost topping the gorge. The animals certainly believed it, and were calling loudly for freedom. Elephants trumpeted, monkeys screamed, the big cats roared and growled. Every living creature, animal and human both, was terrified by this cacophony. The din was terrific, beyond anything any jungle movie had dared. Panic was in the air.

Connecticut Avenue now resembled something like George Washington’s canal at Great Falls: a smooth narrow run of water, paralleling a wild torrent. All the side streets were flooded as well. Nowhere was the water very high, however—usually under a foot—and so the superintendent, looking amazed to hear himself, said “Okay let’s let them out. Cages first, then the enclosures. Work from the gate down to the lower end of the park. Come on—there’s a lot of locks to unlock.”

In the dark rainy air, beside the roaring engorged creek, the staff and their visitors ventured out and began unlocking the animals. They drove them toward Connecticut when necessary, though most animals needed no urging at all, but bolted for the gates with a sure sense of the way out. Some however huddled in their enclosures or cages, and could not be coaxed out. There was no time to spare for any particular cage; if the animals refused to leave, the zookeepers moved on and hoped there would be time to return.

The tapirs and deer were easy. They kept the biggest aviaries closed, feeling they would not flood to their tops. Then the zebras, and after them the cheetahs, the Australian creatures, kangaroos bounding with great splashes; the pandas trundling methodically out in a group, as if they had planned this for years. Elephants on parade; giraffes; hippos and rhinos, beavers and otters; after some consultation, and the coaxing of the biggest cats into their moving trucks, the pumas and smaller cats; then bison, wolves, camels; the seals and sea lions; bears; the gibbons all in a troop, screaming with triumph; the single black jaguar slipping dangerously into the murk; the reptiles, the Amazonian creatures already looking right at home; the prairie dog town, the drawbridge dropped to Monkey Island, causing another stampede of panicked primates; the gorillas and apes following more slowly. Now washes of brown water were spilling over the north end of the park and running swiftly down the zoo’s paths, and the lower end of the zoo was submerged by the brown flow. Very few animals continued to stay in their enclosures, and even fewer headed by mistake toward the creek; the roar was simply too frightening, the message too obvious. Every living thing’s instincts were clear on where safety lay.

The water lapped higher again. It seemed to be rising in distinct surges. It had taken two full hours of frantic work to unlock all the doors, and as they were finishing, a roar louder than before overwhelmed them, and a dirty debris-filled surge poured over the whole park. Something upstream must have given way all at once. Any animals remaining in the lower section of the park would be swept away or drowned in place. Quickly the humans remaining drove the few big cats and polar bears they had herded into their trucks out the entrance and onto Connecticut Avenue. Now all Northwest was the zoo.

The truck that had delivered the Swimming Tigers of Khembalung headed north on Connecticut, containing the tigers in back and the Khembali delegation piled into its cab. They drove very slowly and cautiously through the empty, dark, watery streets. The looming clouds made it look like it was already evening.

The Swimming Tigers banged around in back as they drove. They sounded scared and angry, perhaps feeling that this had all happened before already. They did not seem to want to be in the back of the truck, and roared in a way that caused the humans in the cab to hunch forward unhappily. It sounded like the tigers were taking it out on each other; big bodies crashed into the walls, and the roars and growls grew angrier.

The Khembali passengers advised the driver and zookeeper. They nodded and continued north on Connecticut. Any big dip would make a road impassably flooded, but Connecticut ran steadily uphill to the northwest. Then Bradley Lane allowed the driver to get most of the way west to Wisconsin. When a dip stopped him, he retreated and worked his way farther north, following streets without dips, until they made it to Wisconsin Avenue, now something like a wide smooth stream, flowing hard south, but at a depth of only six inches. They crept along against this flow until they could make an illegal left onto Woodson, and thus around the corner, into the driveway of a small house backed by a big apartment complex.

In the dark air the Khembalis got out, knocked on the kitchen door. A woman appeared, and after a brief conversation, disappeared.

Soon afterward, if anyone in the apartment complex had looked out of their window, they would have seen a curious sight: a group of men, some in maroon robes, others in National Park khakis, coaxing a tiger out of the back of a truck. It was wearing a collar to which three leashes were attached. When it was out the men quickly closed the truck door. The oldest man stood before the tiger, hand upraised. He took up one of the leashes, led the wet beast across the driveway to steps leading down to an open cellar door. Rain fell as the tiger stopped on the steps and looked around. The old man spoke urgently to it. From the house’s kitchen window over them, two little faces stared out round-eyed. For a moment nothing seemed to move but the rain. Then the tiger ducked in the door.

Sometime during that second night the rain stopped, and though dawn of the third morning arrived sodden and gray, the clouds scattered as the day progressed, flying north at speed. By nine the sun blazed down between big puffball clouds onto the flooded city. The air was breezy and unsettled.

Charlie had again spent this second night in the office, and when he woke he looked out the window hoping that conditions would have eased enough for him to be able to attempt getting home. The phones were still down, although e-mails from Anna had kept him informed and reassured—at least until the previous evening’s news about the arrival of the Khembalis, which had caused him some alarm, not just because of the tiger in the basement, but because of their interest in Joe. He had not expressed any of this in his e-mail replies, of course. But he most definitely wanted to get home.

Helicopters and blimps had already taken to the air in great numbers. Now all the TV channels in the world could reveal the extent of the flood from on high. Much of downtown Washington, D.C., remained awash. A giant shallow lake occupied precisely the most famous and public parts of the city; it looked like someone had decided to expand the Mall’s reflecting pool beyond all reason. The rivers and streams that converged on this larger tidal basin were still in spate, which kept the new lake topped up. In the washed sunlight the flat expanse of water was the color of caffe latte, with foam.

Standing in the lake, of course, were hundreds of buildings-become-islands, and a few real islands, and even some freeway viaducts, now acting as bridges over the Anacostia Valley. The Potomac continued to pour through the west edge of the lake, overspilling its banks both upstream and down, whenever lowlands flanked it. Its surface was studded with floating junk which moved slower the farther downstream it got. Apparently the ebb tides had only begun to draw this vast bolus of water out to sea.

As the morning wore on, more and more boats appeared. The TV shots from the air made it look like some kind of regatta—the Mall as water festival, like something out of Ming China. Many people were out on makeshift craft that did not look at all seaworthy. Police boats on patrol were even beginning to ask people who were not doing rescue work to leave, one report said, though clearly they were not having much of an impact. The situation was still so new that the law had not yet fully asserted itself. Motorboats zipped about, leaving beige wakes behind. Rowers rowed, paddlers paddled, kayakers kayaked, swimmers swam; some people were even out in the blue foot-pedaled boats that had once been confined to the Tidal Basin, pedaling around the Mall in majestic ministeamboat style.